Santorum says he would enforce US obscenity laws that Obama ignores

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, IL -- Rick Santorum accused President Barack Obama of not enforcing the country's obscenity laws and said Friday that as chief executive he would crack down on illegal pornography.

Santorum found himself answering pornography questions during a stop at an Italian restaurant here after the discovery of a statement posted in his campaign website in which he asserts that "America is suffering a pandemic of harm from pornography." Recent reporting has shed light on the letter in which the former Pennsylvania senator vowed to "vigorously enforce" all the country's obscenity laws, though he said the statement was posted three weeks ago.

"We actually respond to questions that we get into our campaign when they say 'What are you going to do about these issues?' And when we respond we post them up on our website. And the response is, ‘we'll enforce the law,’" said Santorum.

"I don’t know what the hubbub about that is," he said. "We have a president who is not enforcing the law, and we will."

The candidate best known for espousing family values argues on his website that pornography causes changes in the brain to both children and adults, and contributes to violence against women, prostitution and sex trafficking.

"The Obama administration has turned a blind eye to those who wish to preserve our culture from the scourge of pornography," he wrote.

Santorum's campaign has been sidetracked throughout the primary by eyebrow raising statements on social issues that many Republican voters feel pale in comparison to the importance of the economy. In Illinois, a state where polls show Santorum mounting a close challenge to Mitt Romney, he again found himself answering questions about a social issue that is unlikely to play a role in the 2012 election.

The other problem for the candidate running the most serious challenge to Romney is the fact that again he is not eligible for all the delegates up for grabs in Illinois during Tuesday's primary.

Santorum only filed for 44 of the 54 at stake. It is the same issue his campaign had in Ohio where they went into Super Tuesday knowing they could not win all the Buckeye State's delegates.

Santorum today said his ineligibility for a handful of delegates can be attributed to the grassroots, underdog nature of his campaign.

Months ago, when it was time to file to get on the ballot in many states, Santorum maintained, "We didn’t have a big campaign, a big superstructure, we didn’t have big offices in Boston," he said, a shot at Romney, whose campaign headquarters are in the Massachusetts capital. "We didn’t have millions of dollars to organize this, we had grassroots people."

The GOP hopeful has a tall task ahead of him in the Land of Lincoln, a state where he's being considerably outspent and he cannot rely on a strongly conservative base of voters like the ones who put him over the top in Mississippi and Alabama.

"They like the guy who is scrappy," Santorum said of Republican primary voters. "They like the guy who is trying to overcome the machine. Folks here in Chicago know all about the machine and what it means to fight that machine. It's hard but it's possible."